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"I feel like I've been very fortunate in that I've stuck like a burr to the dog-leg of the next generation of nerdism. I've been carried into the XXIth century on Bill Gates' pants-cuff."
- William Gibson
 |
| Teleoperated Lab Robot | ||
| A robot is used to conduct experiments in an environment too extreme for humans. |
One of the operators of a remotely controlled beetle car is inspecting a project deep in the atmosphere of Jupiter. He is surprised to find a laboratory, with an occupant hard at work.
| ...Helmuth saw instead that there was a large platform jutting out from the buttress not far below him, just to one side of the rails. It was enclosed and roofed, but the material was transparent. And there was motion inside it...
For a wild instant he had thought there was a man on Jupiter already; but as he pulled up just above the platform's roof, he realized that the moving thing inside was - of course - a robot; a misshapen, many-tentacled thing about twice the size of a man. It was working busily with bottles and flasks, of which it seemed to have thousands on benches and shelves all around it The whole enclosure was a litter of what Helmuth took to be chemical apparatus, and off to one side was an object which might have been a microscope... The robot looked up at him and gesticulated with two or three tentacles... "This is Doc Barth. How do you like my laboratory?" |
| Technovelgy from Cities in Flight,
by James Blish. Published by Avon in 1957 Additional resources -
|
It turns out that this is the only way to study the 'jellyfish' of Jupiter, life forms that float freely in the upper levels of the planet.
Compare to the teleoperated mechanical men from The Ancient Brain (1929) by AG Stangland and the space laboratory from Crystalized Thought (1937) by Nat Schachner.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Cities in Flight
More Ideas
and Technology by James Blish
Tech news articles related to Cities in Flight
Tech news articles related to works by James Blish
Teleoperated Lab Robot-related
news articles:
- Robonaut ISS Checkout Video
- Russia's SAR-400 To Work Alongside Robonaut 2
- Mahoro Two-Armed Lab Robot
- Students Control Lab Experiments Remotely Via App
- The Remotely-Operated Cold Atom Laboratory
| Optimus Robot Will Be A Good Nanny, Says Musk |
| LORIS Passive-Gripper Climbing Robot |
| Athena Smart Security Guard Robot With Face Recognition |
| SpaceHopper Microgravity Robot Lands On Its Feet |
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'The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass...'
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
'Nanny is different,' Tom Fields murmured... 'she's not like a machine. She's like a person.'
'We made a crude , small cell and were delighted - and, I admit, somewhat surprised - to find it worked.'
'...we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'The clothes and jewelery drew their tiny power requirements from her movements.'
'At the end of each appendage's eight fingers there are tinier appendages...'
'We want to do something to help those who are suffering from tooth loss or absence,' said lead researcher Katsu Takahashi.
